Chapter 280: Gladiator Tournament Begins
“Ladies and Gentlemen, gamers and watchers,” A VGN Broadcaster began speaking proudly as he stood in his studio, behind him a wide shot of the gladiator arena within Tarolas. “Dwarves, Elves, Lizardfolk, demihumans, and humans alike have all gathered in masses to witness this monumental event.” He motioned to the screen more clearly, “Representatives from all of the strongest guilds, biggest streamers, and every island have come together to compete, with the unified goal of putting a stop to the Sword of Hatred’s reign of terror…”As the caster continued to babble on, Nicholas waved his fingers to take it off of his screen. He was sitting inside his own office simulation with dozens of livestream feeds on display ahead of him, while his ear implant was glowing green.
“How’re we looking?” He asked into his implant, talking to Mike on the other side of his call.
“All hands on deck. System engineers and maintenance are on standby in case anything goes wrong, with this many players on one island with so much attention, it’s gonna be rough but we should manage.” Mike replied confidently.“Good,” Nicholas replied, then took a deep breath as he eyed a numbered graph on the top right most screen of his multiple displays. The number showed the collective viewership of all live stream broadcasts coming from The Shattered World Online, and below that number was how many concurrent users were logged in. Both numbers were staggeringly high, and had ‘New Record!’ in a small font next to them. “Good…” He mumbled a second time to himself, much more worriedly.
Aegis, Lina, Darkshot, Rakkan, Hae-won, and Pyri stepped out of a large pair of wooden doors reinforced with iron. The doors lead into the gladiator arena, where loud cheers were still roaring along with Yumily’s performance, which she was quickly wrapping up.
“Thank you all for coming and your warm welcome. Remember, we mustn’t spread hatred! I’ll continue to sing along as the tournament goes on to keep the spirits up, but it’s time now for me to introduce all of the competitors participating in the tournament, as the opening ceremony for the 39th monthly Gladiator tournament is about to begin!” Yumily called out with enthusiasm, her demeanor having completely shifted from how it was just minutes ago.
Aegis didn’t pay much mind to what Yumily was doing, though, and instead turned to Hae-won as she followed behind the group.